A Battling Plane

A Battling Plane
There is a depth in souls,
A dark chasm of emptiness and shame,
An abyss of sorrow,
As it grows, life seems unimpervious to its pull.

There is a saint in everyone,
Pure, strong, and deftly keen in aim,
A portal to a true hero,
Unfound and nonexistence of this is found in none.

Two paths crossed,
A cosmic vortex of blissfulness and filled with the insane,
A battling plane of slough,
One of them triumphed, but which one lost?

Hmmm...

One of the weird thing about this poem is the creative spelling. Sometimes, as in a nonsense poem, this works, but other times this doesn't. I'm not quite sure if these are typos or intentional, but I think it would be better to go with standard spelling.

casm = chasm

emptieness = emptiness

sarrow = sorrow

inexistance = inexistence

wich = which

Okay, now that that's done, there's two other words tha really are quite strange, so I'm just going to go over the definitions really quickly. I do this to a lot of poets and story writers alike -- not just you -- so don't feel alone.

unimpervious

Word doesn't recognize this as a word, but the word "impervious" means "unyielding" or "inflexible." So, by saying "unimpervious" this means that it's "flexible." Is this what you intend to say? If this is so, then say it in a real word. Try not to make this stuff up.

deftnessly

This is one of those words that Strunk would probably have a fit about. The word "deft" is an adjective which means "nimble" and "deftness" is a noun to describe nimbleness. So why are you making a noun into an adverb when you can just as easily make an adjective into a adverb -- and that would be more prefered? So I would rather have "deftly" instead of "deftnessly."

With that said, I think it is quite impossible to have someone "deftly keen in aim."

One of the things you have to be careful about, especially in poetry, is to clutter up your words with as many adjectives as you can. Adjectives do not build and frequently they can destroy everything you've come up with, if you rely totally on them.

Also, remember: poetry is not just stringing words together. Well, it is when you're doing nonsense poetry, but I don't think that is your aim. So instead, focus on meaning. What do you want to say? Put this above everything. In fact, write out what you want to say first and then make it pretty in your subsequent drafts. I would rather see a poem with meat and potatoes but no seasoning or gravy rather than a whole bunch of salt and gravy on my plate but no real food.

Anyway, good luck with your future endeavors!

ty for the critisism =)

=) i edited it, ty groink

Hello Mr. Everyone,

Welcome to YWS, dear, considered yourself SPEWed. When I read this, it seems almost fragmented; as if the three stanzas are actually three different poems, there doesn't seem to be anything that really holds them all together.

Snoink mentioned this: unimpervious; which is not a word. Making up words is fine, usually done by compound two others, but this just feels clunky. As if you wanted a big word, and put it in where ever you could, because you could. Not anything against you or your language skills but that is just how I read it. Maybe try a word that is not as clunky.

This line needs to be rewritten, Unfound and nonexistence of this is found in none., as it stands it is so wordy, it makes almost no sense. I am not sure of what you are trying to say here; are you saying that this portal to being a true hero is nonexistent, that you can never attain true hero stature? or are you saying that the portal to being a true hero is hard to find? or is it that no one has the ability to be a true hero?

Two paths crossed,
A cosmic vortex of blissfulness and filled with the insane,

This is off. You introduce the scene, there are two paths, the next thought is two paths, they must be different. But you don't set up the dichotomy, you use 'and'. Another point the second line is way, way too wordy; cosmic vortex of blissfulness is a tongue stopper. Try paring it down with your editing knife.

I'm not sure I like you ending the poem with a question, I'm sure you could do better.

Overall, I think it is a good try. If you try working in some other things that tie the three stanzas together, I think it would do a world of good.

Hope this helps, and good luck.
CL


Courtesy of SPEW and Kitten Eaters Anonymous

It is a scene for a by-polar mind

many times the mind is split into what most spychologists call moral and immoral

and the first stanza represents the immoral

the second the moral

the last stanza is these decisions crossing the victims mind.

and it ends asking the victim, or the reader...

who won in there decision, morality or immorality

conveying the existance of good and evil

happy reading everyone

thank you for the critisism

'bipolar'

eh, maybe you should download the new version of firefox. it has an auto spellcheck and will underline your misspellings in red as you type.

Please...take her suggestion and download it. We would all really appreciate this.

Hello! We meet again.

You have been seriously SPEWed now ^_^

FIRST of all, the title. Please edit the title! **begs** LOL. Sorry, but when I first saw it I thought you were referring to an actual plane -- as in one with wings, and guns, and bombs and --- well, I'm a WW nut so it was disappointing, and it made the poem even more confusing for me LOL. I think you mean "Plain" -- OK?

Next...

There is a depth in souls,
A dark chasm of emptiness and shame,
An abyss of sorrow,
As it grows, life seems unimpervious to its pull.

OK, with your explanation I see what is happening here, and I really love that first line -- it sounds very intriguing and mysterious. But the rest of the verse really doesnt live up to its promise. And, as the others have said, "unimpervious"???? The words you're looking for, methinks, is simply "impervious" -- which sounds so much better.

Problems: first, this sentence is TOO LONG. Break it up, please. I think a full stop would go nicely at the end of the second line, and you could do away with the third line altogether as it is (1) too short and (2) repetitive, adding nothing to the poem. Your last line is too long, and a bit weird -- fix "unimpervious" and perhaps divide it in two and I think you'll be right though.

There is a saint in everyone,
Pure, strong, and deftly keen in aim,
A portal to a true hero,
Unfound and nonexistence of this is found in none.

Like CL said, this needs to be linked in some way to the previous stanza. When a poet needs to explain his/her poem, this is generally not a good thing. If you get published your poem is going to be out there all on its own, without its parent to smooth the way for it and explain away its mistakes. So you need to make sure your offspring can stand on its own two feet, and that means explaining for itself.

I also agree that "deftly keen in aim" is pretty unlikely. You might want to drop the "keen" or "deftly" as neither of these seem to work together. Also, what is he aiming? At what? You need to follow through with this image, or your reader is just going to end up confused.

And once again, that last line...is weird. I *think* you're trying to say that "the portal to a true hero" (nice line, btw) is found in everyone, and is never "unfound". That's all very well, but personally I would recommend you get rid of this line altogether. Two reasons: (1) too confused and (2) restatement of the first line, which is basically needless.

You might want to think about your punctuation here too. I'm certain there needs to be some full stops in there!

Two paths crossed,
A cosmic vortex of blissfulness and filled with the insane,
A battling plane of slough,
One of them triumphed, but which one lost?

We need specifics here -whose paths crossed? Where? Remember, we want this little baby to stand on its own. So we need some more info!

I like the mystery of the last line, but it could use a bit more pizzaz IMHO. Dress it up a bit!

Like your other poem, this one needs to go a bit deeper and in a more orderly fashion. At this point, it really does sound like a bunch of words strung together, and the picture is muddied and unclear. You need to straighten out what you're trying to say, and say it as simply and poetically as you can. Interestingly, the two poems I have read by you seem to differ in extremes -- the first was simplistic to the point of being obvious, while this is complex to the point of being obscure. Try to find a happy medium!

Meantime, welcome once again to YWS! If you need anything, just holler

Cheers,
~bubbles